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Monday, 11 July 2011

This is not about sex, and not about The Sex Myth. This is about the old blog, and the growing scandal in News International's paper the rules they played by. And as Prince Humperdinck so eloquently put it, I always think everything could be a trap.

Very early on in blogging as Belle de Jour, I had an email address associated with the blog. It was with one of those free email providers and not very secure. Later, I wised up a touch and moved to doing everything through Hushmail. But for some reason I kept the old email up and running, and checked it occasionally.

So on the day of the book's release in the UK, I logged on to a public library computer in Clearwater, Florida, and had a look at that old account. There was a new message from someone I didn't recognise. I opened it.

The message was from a journo at the Sunday Times. It was short, which struck me as unusual: Come on Belle, not even a little hint? There was an attachment. The attachment started downloading automatically (then if I remember correctly, came up with a "failed to download" message).

My heart sank - my suspicion was that there had been a program attached to the message, some sort of trojan, presumably trying to get information from my computer.

Now, I understood the papers regarded all of this as a game. There were accusations that the anonymity thing was a ruse to pump sales. It wasn't. I was really afraid of losing my job and my career if found out. But I knew the rules they played by. And as Prince Humperdinck so eloquently put it, I always think everything could be a trap.

I did several things:

1. Alerted library staff that I thought there had been a virus downloaded on to the computer, so they could deal with it.

2. Phoned a friend who knew my secret. I explained what happened. He agreed to log in to that email account from where he lived, halfway around the world, open the email and send a reply, so they would have competing IP address information.

3. Alerted the man who owned the .co.uk address pointing to my blog, someone called Ian (who to my knowledge I have never met). He confirmed he had been contacted by the Times and asked if I was indeed in Florida. He told them he didn't know (which was true).

Point 3 is the part that makes me think my suspicions were correct. I hadn't replied to the message from the computer in Florida, so why would they have a Florida IP address? They did get a reply from "my" account, but it would have had an IP address from Australia.

(It's been suggested on Twitter that this could also have been because of a read receipt or embedded images. However, if my memory serves - and it usually does - the service I used did not send read receipts and I had images/HTML off as a matter of habit. There could of course be other explanations for what happened, but it is certainly true that the Times were trying hard to find me. Thanks for the comments, I hope this answers any concerns.)

The usual disclaimer... I am (as indeed all of Kutcher's critics are)
opposed to trafficking in any form, including child sex trafficking. But
we must not let emotion exclusively carry the day; it achieves nothing.
The Voice hits the nail on the head when they sum up anti-trafficking efforts: "an emotional reaction, based on good intentions, but grounded in bogus information."

The problem of bogus information is this - campaigns such as Kutcher's
conflate all sex work with child sex trafficking, and child sex
trafficking with all trafficking. Approaches that do so not only
encourage criminalisation legislation that harms consenting adults, but
also obscures the real victims. How? By using vastly inflated numbers
for one kind of trafficking, and pretty much ignoring everything else.
Actual children being actually trafficked for actual sex are rarely, if
ever, found by the kind of scatterhsot brothel raids and streetwalker crackdowns so many seem to consider "succeses" in the anti-trafficking effort.

Kutcher’s response against the Village Voice has included tweeting
advertisers on Backpage.com, accusing them of supporting slavery. So
far, so "concerned". And then this tweet:

Like a lot of people, Ashton Kutcher seems to have some pretty confused
ideas about sex work. To be in a position of wanting to help people, yet
still falling back on ridicule and stereotype when talking about them,
is inexcusable. Someone who says,

"I’ve spent the last 2
years meeting with every expert on the issue of Human Trafficking that I
can find, reading countless books, meeting with victims and former
traffickers, and studying effective international models to combat
trafficking."

Maybe Ashton should have made time for a
little bit of victim sensitivity training in there somewhere? (Not that
he's known for politically correct tweeting, mind. He seems to channel the spirit of Littlejohn every now and again.)

The Witherspoon report encourages celebrities to “use the bully pulpit”
and abuses suspiciously similar dodgy statistics as Kutcher’s campaign.
And while it doesn't name particular celebrities to be promoted as faces
of such bullying, a similar document from Abt Associates does - it specifically names Kutcher's wife, Demi Moore.

I know a little about what it's like to be asked to comment on issues
you don't necessarily have expertise in. Sometimes, journalists and
television shows approach people like me to provide commentary rather
than, say, academics in the relevant fields. It's unfortunate but it's a
fact of media life. And I do try, by following academic discussions and
talking with friends who are professionals in, say, sex education or
the porn industry, to at least not come off as too much of an ignorant
tit. I would shudder in horror, though, to ever be described as a "leading player"
in the debate around trafficking or related issues. Something that
Kutcher and his wife Moore seem to have no problem with. The strategy
clearly works, with significant numbers of Kutcher's followers joining
in his Twitter tirade, and the man himself being promoted as somehow more of an expert on the issues than, ya know, actual experts.

Not bad for a guy whose credentials, according to his Twitter profile, are: "I make stuff up."

The Voice article pointed out that it's not known how many of the
millions, if any, raised by Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher's campaign
have actually gone to helping victims directly. With their charity
having only been launched 5 months ago, and apparently no financial
reports as yet available, it's hard to know when that pointed question
will be resolved. I'd like to add another dimension to that question: how
many of the millions raised by Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher could be
coming from groups such as the Family Research Council?

The well-meaning Twitter fans following Kutcher's lead probably don't
realise they're being taken for a ride on the facts front. It can
actually be very hard to sort the real from the fake when people keep
repeating made-up stuff as true. So I guess my question now is, why are
Kutcher’s millions of fans seemingly totally okay with this movement's
possible links to the far-right hawkish Christian lobbyists? And when
will the likes of Kutcher and Moore realise they're the ones being used,
not by evil evil sex traffickers, but by conservative groups with a
frightening agenda?